Fish Can Fly

Oil on canvas. Completed: December 2008. SOLD.

My goal for this painting was to create a piece with many layers, physically as well as contextually. Using many layers of under-painting, I built up the sky, features of the landscape and fish figures into each other, so that each element is very much connected with the others. The content started in a straightforward manner: a desert landscape reminiscent of my hometown, Albuquerque, with a touch of surrealist aesthetic: koi fish swimming throughout the sky, and perhaps through the desert sand as well. It may be that this piece is a representational depiction of my current and impermanent home, but it displays a longing for another possible world where fish can fly.

The original title I had in mind for this piece was Home: Landscape in Orange, but it reminded the man who purchased it so much of a shirt design by Bono, that it has become affectionately known as Fish Can Fly.